Having given up their adapted home in Leicester, they bought a caravan to live in while the home was built – but ended up living in laybys for 16 months.

‘It just went from bad to worse and we ended up living in laybys,’ Steve said.

‘There was a time when me and my wife, we lost our home, son, everything.

‘We were contemplating suicide, that’s how low we had got to the point of “where do we go from here?”.

The caravan Steve and Lilian Ritchie lived in for 16 months after being cheated out of thousands by Barry Leigh

‘We had nothing but what we’d got round us. The old house was set up, adapted, for my wife but the park home life seemed idyllic.

‘Barry knew all that – he just blanked us and refused to pick up the phone.’

They are desperate to get their money back as it was Lilian’s inheritance.

John Pullen, prosecuting for Hampshire County Council, previously told city magistrates: ‘Mr Leigh is sole director of Dream Coastal and Country Homes, incorporated June 8, 2012.

‘This is a company selling lodge homes on estates in desirable locations primarily in the south or west of the UK.

‘He made false representations to the victims concerning the land.

‘He misled them into believing he owned the land and there was planning approval had been granted for siting lodge on the land. It transpires that none of those statements were true.

‘The consequences of this was that victims parted with considerable amounts of money.’

He added: ‘Some of the victims have lost absolutely everything and the effects have been devastating on them.’

Leigh admitted fraudulently trading between August 7, 2013 and July 26, 2014, three charges of fraud by false representations to three victims, forgery of a bank account to show he had £980,121.35, and use of a false instrument – the statement – to fool Humberts Estates Agents. He also admitted laundering £620,145.

He pleaded guilty on the basis the firm was not a lie from the start and he believed he could bring it all together.